Poetry, Art, Medicine & Society

Street Performer, Mexico City

Marveling bystanders applaud his burning
Star, its vertices eight wheeling torches,
A brass hoop he faces the sky to hold
Up with his clenched chin, an adversary
Of gravity, the odds, and just plain sense.
Bare-chested, he boasts a statue’s torso,
The festive skirt of an Aztec sun worshipper.
These tourists of his torrid zone have come
Far south, grope for coins and context, the cosmogony
Of their own experience, mimes unicycling in a park,
A subway cellist sawing off debts, her velvet
Case starry with quarters. The crowd believes him
Here just for show, quaint diversion, a little fun
And profit from useless talent. They’re ravenous
For spectacle, sacrifice to the primitive gods
Of pride and failure, can’t see the hours
Of practice that make the trick possible,
His whole life an act of trembling balance,
Of sweaty breathing and keeping the tender
Jaw rigid. There’s nothing so solitary,
Though his young wife would have assisted,
Selling penny candy from a bag instead
Of sleeping in their dim niche of an apartment.
But she’s ponderous, about to hatch
A little more risk. He’s juggling children
Already and they sear him whenever he gets
Near them, even in his thoughts. The words
He uses flare about him, how this is much
Better than Sinola with its fields, its shootouts,
Though she prays for curtains, a working stove.
He’s like Nanahuatzin the sacred and willing
Legend who leapt into the inferno
And became brilliance in the final age.
He doesn’t want sympathy, just the living green
Ash of Yankee dollars, and he’s tried everything,
Burnishing windshields at stoplights with spit
And paper, guiding drivers parking cars into
A minute of his world. But there’s no playing
With fire, the real draw, or so he wants
Them to think, purveyor of the perfect
Stunt or just another shoddy miracle.

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David Moolten

About me: I'm the author of three books of poetry, Plums & Ashes (Northeastern University, 1994), which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, Especially Then (David Robert Books, 2005), and Primitive Mood, which won the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press, and was published in 2009.

I'm also a physician specializing in transfusion medicine, and I live, write and practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Audio Files

'Cuda(Originally appeared in The Kenyon Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright(Originally appeared in The Southern Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright

I don't yearn for their steep excursion
Into fame and fortune, for it had
The usual price, and Orville died bitter
And Wilbur died young. I envy them
Only the slender and empty distance they left
Between them and a seaside's grassy bluffs
In mild December, the frail ingenuity
Of dreams, a lifetime's hopes made of string and cloth
And a little puttering motor that might have run
A lawn mower if the brothers had put their minds
To one first. For dumb exhilaration, nothing --
Not an F-16 thundering from its base
In Turkey nor my redeye circling O'Hare --
Comes close to what they must have felt
For less than a shaking, clattering minute
Clearing all attachment to the world
Of dickering and petty concerns: for some
No other heaven. So I take note of them
As they took notes from the lonely buzzard, obsessed
To the point of love with the ghostly air
And the small fluttering things that wandered
Through it. Eccentric but never flighty,
Bookish but not above nicking their hands
In bicycle shops and basements, they lived
With their sister and tinkered with the future.
Propelled by ambition, the mandate
It invents, they still heeded the laws
Of nature, trimmed needless weight, saw everything
Even themselves as burden, determined
Not to crash and burn. Sheer will launched them,
Good will, because those first forty yards
Skimming shale and reeds were for everyone.
Face down between the struts, staring at the ground
As it blurred past, they failed like anyone
To grasp the implications. But legs flailing
They hung on, buoyed by never and almost
And then just barely. I could do worse
Than their brief rapture, their common sense
Of purpose. Or I could, if only
For a moment, exalt them, go along
With the jury-rigged myth, the quaint
Contrivance that lets them rise above it all.

Guy Glass, MD, MFA, Clinical Assistant Professor Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics Stony Brook School of Medicine I am a psychiatrist who writes plays and has several professional productions and published plays to my credit. Having recently earned an MFA in theater from Stony Brook University, I […]

Richard Selzer and Ten Terrific Tales by Tony Miksanek, MD Family Physician and Author, Raining Stethoscopes If there were a Medical Humanities Hall of Fame, physician-writer Richard Selzer (1928-2016) would be a first-ballot selection. And likely by a unanimous vote. The diminutive doctor had a very large presence in the […]

Always when we watch street performers we never consider the hours and toil that make their craft appear so brilliant. Thank you for sharing this focus into their personal strife. It was brought home for me with the line,” can’t see the hours of practice that make the trick possible,”. A very well written piece.

A poem embued with understanding, but not pity. The well-wrought blank verse (modified) lends dignity to the subject of the poem. These lines sound especially Shakespearean to me:
The crowd believes him
Here just for show, quaint diversion, a little fun
And profit from useless talent.

Some depressing aspects of poverty i.e.spit and paper to clean windshields…Laughed at the cellist in the subway sawing off debts.Sorry!
When we were music students I used to share with a friend who used to pawn her viola when she was running short of money.Her father was a rich businessman who travelled regularly. He would bring back as presents mikimoto pearls and the like and she would sell those to get her viola out of pawn.I hope she never reads this.I loved your poem.You are setting a very high standard here for the rest of us.